Friday, April 9, 2010

ANC’s Malema calls BBC reporter “Bastard”

Say it with a sting.....

ANC’s Malema calls BBC reporter “Bastard”

Returning from ‘Uncle Bob’s farm’ ANC youth leader Julius Malema adopted his uncle’s attitude, insulting journalists. At a press conference Malema picked on BBC correspondent Jonah Fisher, who remarked his speech.Malema was enough to give anyone indigestion with slick words criticizing the Zimbabwe (the former Rhodesia) opposition party (Movement for Democratic Change), arguing they should go back to Zimbabwe instead of working from offices in the affluent Johannesburg suburb of Sandton.Fisher interrupted, saying that Malema also lived in Sandton. But that was too much for the kindergarden king, who leashed out.“This is a building of a revolutionary party and you know nothing about revolution so here you behave or else you jump,” he said- voice raised. Fisher attempted to respond, but Malema went on, calling for security. “Chief, can you get security to remove this ‘thing’ here?”Malema went on using his racial cliche argument, “If you are not going to behave we are going to call security to take you out. This is not a newsroom this, this is a revolutionary house and you don’t come here with your tendency. Don’t come here with that white tendency, not here, you can do it somewhere else. If you’ve got a tendency of undermining blacks even where you work you are in the wrong place.”When Fisher replied, “That’s rubbish.” Malema raised his voice further, demanding him to leave saying, “Rubbish is what you have covered in that trouser, that is rubbish. You are a small boy, you can’t do anything. Bastard, go out, you bloody agent.”The BBC journalist wasn’t the only one Malema slagged. The youth leader invited journalists who wished to leave in solidarity with the BBC to do so, but to no avail as Malema threatened that rules for the media were different in Africa.“When you are here, you are in a different terrain. You are in our space. This is not America, this is Africa,” he said.Media experts said that the likes of Fisher, who happens to be a correspondent for BBC television and radio would always be a threat to Malema. Fisher won international fame when he, reported from a Greenpeace ship for two weeks while it hounded a Japanese whaling fleet forcing it to loose its catch of anything. He was also beaten by security forces when reporting from Sudan, experts added.